


Freak Scene

by noblet



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 13:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15909390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblet/pseuds/noblet
Summary: It didn’t take too long for rumors to start floating around. Every once in awhile Shane would overhear someone whispering that he and Ryan were dating, or that they lived together, or that the whole show is just one big ploy to get the company to pay for hotel rooms.Shane’s favorite is the last one, especially since they almost never sleep in hotel rooms, Ryan forcing them to sleep on location instead for more footage.Overall, the rumors don’t bother them much. With increasing popularity comes a sharp rise in speculation and, well, they of all people should know how much the internet likes to talk.(aka the soulmate au that no one asked for)





	Freak Scene

**Author's Note:**

> The premise of soul mates is explained in the fic so there's no need to really know it beforehand.
> 
> Title comes from Dinosaur Jr's song Freak Scene
> 
> ALSO if you're reading this and it's around September 6th, pls know that I haven't edited this super thoroughly yet so bear with any errors thanks

Ryan sleeps all the way from Bakersfield to Burbank, and Shane drives in silence, trying to ignore the dirty looks thrown at him as he fearlessly goes 30 in a 60-mile zone.

Ryan sleeps with his face pressed hard against the passenger window, even breaths fogging up the glass. He's like the dead, unmoving and eerily quiet, and Shane smirks at nothing in particular with his hands clutched white-knuckled on the wheel.

His mind drifts from how much he hates driving Ryan's car to the night they'd just spent together, sleeping in the basement of a house surely teeming with asbestos. It was a lot like a sleepover, really, and it would’ve felt like one if Ryan hadn’t woken him up every twenty minutes whenever his mind imagined a floorboard creaking.

Sure, Shane feels bad about the way he dared the ghosts to rip his bones out of his body (much to the chagrin of Ryan and the crew), but watching him turn white at the sound of an accidental fart was, with no doubt, _hilarious._ And, okay, maybe Shane doesn’t feel _that_ bad.

It’s endearing, kind of, the way Ryan can be unabashedly fearful of the most nonsense things, and Shane wonders about it quite a bit. He doesn’t get how Ryan gets so riled up and goddamn _touchy_ whenever they throw themselves into these types of places, while Shane’s anxiety has never resulted in anything more than a slight stomach ache.

It’s the way Ryan clings to him that's so damn charming, grabbing his arm or gripping his jacket when the cameras aren’t rolling, or when they’re sitting in the dark, waiting, listening, for something to happen.

Whenever it happens, Shane can somehow _feel_ Ryan’s fear, emanating like heat from a fire, burning hot and dangerous, but Shane never pulls away.

He can’t understand it, how someone could possibly believe in things that are so obviously not real.

 

Ryan wakes up twenty minutes later, moments after Shane makes the split-second decision to slam the breaks before hitting what he thinks is a tiny kitten. (It is, in fact, an admirably large pine cone, but Ryan’s headlights are just that shitty ). Even Ryan is understanding despite his face feeling like it’s just gotten suplexed into the dash.

“Sorry,” Shane murmurs as he continues driving. If he wasn’t alert before, he sure as hell is _now._

“Mmm,” Ryan hums, cozying up into the headrest before closing his eyes again.

“Really?” Shane asks, tutting. “You just slept for like, two hours.”

“Still tired as shit,” Ryan mumbles, eyes closed. “Fuckin’ ghosts last night- kept making the floorboards creak, and god, your _snoring._ ”

“Like a bear, I know, I know,” Shane says, consciously forcing himself to ease his grip on the wheel, lest Ryan see. 

“Thanks for driving,” Ryan says. “I’d probably fall asleep at the wheel and crash into something at eighty miles an hour, and then we’d both be goners.”

“God forbid.” Shane feigns concern. “If you ever turned into a ghost, I’d never hear the end of it.”

“I’d haunt the fuck out of you,” Ryan murmurs. “Believe me.”

Shane laughs this time. “Please don’t. I don't know how I could possibly get on without you.”

“That’s oddly touching,” Ryan says.

“Shut up,” Shane says, and Ryan laughs.

=====

When Ryan tells him that he wants to do an episode on soulmates, Shane’s stomach drops. His fork freezes mid-air above his lunch, and Shane stares at it.

“Why?” Is all he can think to ask.

“ _Why?_ ” Ryan throws the question back, squinting at him in faux suspicion for full effect. “You’ve never questioned one of my pitches before.”

“But it’s just- why soulmates?” Shane tries not to sound like he’s whining, but he’s whining. “It’s not really supernatural. And it’s definitely not true crime,” he reasons.

“But it’s _unsolved_ ,” Ryan points out. “And it’s almost February. Valentine’s day and all that. I think it would be a good one-off to add to the season.”

Shane silently ponders it under the guise of taking a sip of his drink.

“Soulmates are _stupid_ , Ryan,” he insists.

“You think _anything that isn’t Bigfoot_ is stupid,” says Ryan.

“And I’m right.”

Ryan rolls his eyes. “We’re doing it,” he decides. “Whether you like it or not. It’ll be easy. I’ll do my research, talk to a few people. It’ll probably be a lot less time-consuming compared to most of the stuff we’ve been putting out. Besides, _everybody_ loves hearing about soulmates.”

“Yeah,” Shane sighs. Once Ryan sets his heart on something, there’s no stopping him from getting it. “Okay.”

=====

After Unsolved premiered nearly two years ago, it didn’t take long for people to start noticing the ease at which their relationship developed. On top of all that, people actually _liked_ them, actually enjoyed their stupid banter and bullshit puns and commentary. The show had become, quite literally, an overnight sensation. 

Ryan was surprised. Shane wasn’t.

It didn’t take too long for rumors to start floating around. Every once in awhile Shane would overhear someone whispering that he and Ryan were dating, or that they lived together, or that the whole show is one big ploy to get the company to pay for hotel rooms.

Shane’s favorite is the last one, especially since they almost _never_ sleep in hotel rooms, Ryan instead forcing them to sleep on location instead for more footage.

Overall, the rumors don’t bother them much. With increasing popularity comes a sharp rise in speculation and, well, they of all people should know how much the internet likes to talk.

=====

The thing about soulmates, Ryan is quick to learn, is that there’s a lot of bullshit surrounding the truth of it all.

Over the years, human experience and extensive studies have reduced its premise to this:

You have your soulmates words written on your skin, except they aren’t their first words spoken to you. They’re the first words they say after _you_ have fallen in love them.

Which means you can know your soulmate for days, months, or even years without even realizing it until they say those words—the moment you realize that you love them. That also means that they may have already fallen in love with you and realized you’re their soulmate, while you go on oblivious to that knowledge. They can pine for years until you finally reciprocate, or they can even pine forever if you don’t. You can be their soulmate, but someone else could also be yours. This also means that you could fall in love with someone, not get a soul mark, and realize that they aren’t your soulmate after all.

It’s all kind of hard to keep track of, and most of the time it’s infinitely complicated.

It’s the lack of certainty that bothers him. You’re never sure if the person saying those words is your soulmate or not unless you ask them outright, and Ryan’s sure he’d rather disappear into a hole in the ground than have that conversation with anyone in his life.

Ryan sits back from his computer screen and leans deep, deep into his chair. Researching is usually one of his favorite things to do for the show, but now?

There are just so many loose ends, and he can’t even find one good theory as to _why_ soulmates exist in the first place. So far, humankind has only figured the  _whats_ of it, and it’s frustrating. His hand reaches up to rub at the short stubble on his chin as he turns to Shane, who seems just as tired and done with the day as Ryan feels.

“Hey,” Ryan says, and Shane looks at him with sleepy eyes (they always look sleepy, but still), “Mind if I pick your brain for a moment?”

He obliges. Shane takes off his headphones off and nods, looking a little too eager to get pulled away from his work. “Pick away, baby.”

“First of all, don’t call me baby,” Ryan says, and Shane rolls his eyes. “Second of all, what do you think about soulmates?”

Shane’s face drops. “I’ve already told you what I think.”

“Yeah, but- I mean-” Ryan pinches the bridge of his nose, feeling the frustration building in his temples. “ _Why?_ ”

“Well,” Shane starts. “We all know that the majority of people _don’t_ find their soulmates, yeah? So most people just settle for whoever. Or is it whomever? Whatever.”

“Sure,” Ryan says. It’s almost always a lot deeper than that, but he isn’t really sure what to say. “Sure,” he repeats. “Yeah.”

“Honestly, I think it’s some sort of weird biological fluke.”

Ryan knows enough to know for sure that’s far from the truth, but it’s not like he has any truth of his own to offer.

“Humans are weird,” Shane goes on, lips pursed in a line of deep thought. “I think it’s easy to convince yourself that you love someone just so you could fulfill the prophecy of the mark or whatever. We’re weak-willed. No one wants to die alone, so people panic and start pairing up, soulmate or not.”

“Geez,” Ryan says. “That’s kind of depressing.”

Shane shrugs. “Well, that’s just how I see it. I’ve never gotten caught in the fantasy of it all, so to speak.”

“But-” Ryan interjects, “it’s pretty obvious that you’ve thought about it.”

“Of course I’ve thought about it,” Shane says, not looking at Ryan but instead at his own computer screen. His lips twitch, indicating that he’s about to say something more, but evidently decides against it.

And now, even though Ryan’s never really thought about Shane like _that_ before (well, he has, but it’s not like he ever lingered on it, thank you very much), he really wants to ask. He’s practically _dying_ to ask, but the best of Ryan decides that this is not the time, nor the place, so he just goes back to work instead.

=====

When Ryan was younger, he _loved_ the idea of meeting his soulmate one day. Starting in high school, he’d inspect every inch of his body during his showers whenever he was crushing on someone, hoping to find a word, a phrase, some kind of sentence printed onto his skin. He’d check religiously, even in college when his roommates made the obvious jokes that came with doing such a thing, but it never really bothered him.

Ryan still checks. Not every day, but maybe once every few weeks, if he can find the time.

The more Ryan researches, the more he wonders about Shane’s soul mark. It’s only natural, after all.

He’s Ryan’s left-hand man, his partner-in-crime, his ghoulfriend, so to speak, and they’re doing a whole episode on it, for crying out loud.

Sometimes, he wonders if Shane even _has_ a soul mark, devil that he is. If Ryan had to bet on it, he’d probably preach the negative.

He’s known Shane for a while, and well, he just doesn’t seem to be the romantic type.

=====

“Do you ever feel- I dunno- bad about not getting soul-marked?” Ryan asks over coffee one morning.

Shane looks at him with an odd expression. “Huh?”

“Nothing,” Ryan takes a scalding hot sip of his espresso. “I was just wondering.”

“I never-" Shane backtracks. "I never explicitly told you that I _don’t_ have a soul mark.” 

Ryan looks at him, _really_ looks at him, and surely enough, he knows that he's not being told the whole truth. “So, you mean-”

Shane nods. “Yep.”

“But you've never talked about it.”

“I- just got mine, actually. A few days ago.” Shane shrugs tensely, and any hope Ryan had about getting him to spill some more information drains away. “How about you?” he asks, switching the topic from him to Ryan quickly. “Your-”

“Uh, um,” Ryan says. “I don’t have one. It's been a while since I've, you know. Checked myself?”

“Oh,” Shane says, deflating just a little, and Ryan doesn’t know why _that_ makes him feel a little guilty. “I mean, that’s fine!” Shane perks up. He reaches over the table and gives Ryan an awkward slap on the shoulder. “Hell, that’s _good._ Good on you, man.”

Ryan just nods.

“I mean, even though I have one, it’s not like I’ll ever find him or anything,” Shane rambles on.

“Him?”

Shane reddens. “Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a guy, based on the words. Just a hunch I had.”

“And what are the words, exactly?”

Shane shakes his head definitively. “You’d laugh.”

Ryan’s eyebrows raise in amusement. “You’d be surprised.”

Shane just shakes his head again. “No Ryan, I’m serious.” He looks down at his coffee. “I'll tell you. I _want_ to tell you. Just- not today, alright?”

Ryan smiles that same, stupid warm smile that he's grown to love, and suddenly Shane wants to tell him everything. 

**Author's Note:**

> I plan on adding another chapter or two to this. The next part is almost finished, stick around and I'll probably post it in a few days.


End file.
